Philippine Genre Stories

Thursday, January 25, 2007

A Writing Contest!

Philippine Genre Stories will give a free copy of the next issue (and P100.00, enough for a good cup of coffee) to the person who writes the best genre story (speculative, horror, crime, mystery, detective, sci-fi, etc.) about the above picture. The story will be printed in a future issue. Please send your entries to pdoimage@yahoo.com, and please label your email "Siluet Entry". Include your name and your pertinent contact information. Deadline is February 11, 2007.

To help you, ask yourselves a few questions: Who's the kid in the foreground, and is the kid a boy or a girl? Who's the man further away? Is he walking away from or walking to the kid? Do they know each other? If yes, what's their relationship? If not, what does this encounter mean? And where the heck are they? Is that a school? A hospital? An army barracks? A mental institution? Is the kid scared? Or is it the man who's afraid?

The above image is called "Siluet", and was taken by Dmitry, who hails from Chernogolovka, Russia. It was lifted from morguefile.com, a public image archive. Siluet is intriguing, and the background blur only enhances that feeling. Dmitry has said that he is very glad that we are using his photo, so please drop him a line and let him know what you think of it (his email address: dzz@mail.ru). PGS has abided by all the Terms of Use for this image as stipulated at morguefile.com. PGS is not responsible for any attacks of inspiration from this photo that will lead to lost time spent writing a longer story that lasts for pages and pages. Well, maybe a little.

And Now A Good Word from Butch Dalisay...

Kenneth’s project, while decidedly modest, has the advantage of its focus on what’s been called “genre fiction.” “Genre” means category, and genre fiction involves specialized categories like sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance, historical fiction, and detective and crime fiction. It’s a kind of writing that, perhaps ironically, used to be mainstream fiction, or the stuff everyone loved to read, before “highbrow” fiction pushed it aside and relegated it to the entertainment book bin as second-class literary fare. That’s an unfortunate misimpression. There’s no doubt that genre fiction is entertaining and often aims to do little more than give us an hour’s escape from the drudgery of daily living, but we forget that much of the kind of “classic” fiction we discuss in graduate seminars today started out as popular fiction, written to thrill the ordinary reader and to pay the writer’s rent. That’s what Poe and Chekhov were doing. That they wrote some memorable masterpieces along the way is for us a happy bonus.

And his opinion?

Bravo, Kenneth, and all the best to you on this brave new venture.

You can read the scanned images of his column here: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.